


they are one person, they are two alone, they are three together

by lesbianbabydriver



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Flashbacks, M/M, Post-Book, Recreational Drug Use, the sharp ache of memory, the thrill and terror of getting what you want, yes Boris wears his heels in this one, yes i abuse the em dash you can thank ms donna tartt!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 00:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20826005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianbabydriver/pseuds/lesbianbabydriver
Summary: There were many nights Boris remembers that Theo doesn’t--always a gulf between them, these things unacknowledged. Boris would always know more about Potter than Potter would know about him. There would always be the sound of sobs echoing in Boris’s ears, always the vodka-soaked late night admissions, the jumping off the roof, the blood spattering on the tiles. Always the feeling of Potter’s breath hot against his neck as he said “she called me Puppy sometimes” and then, always Boris allowing himself to whispertsutsenyalater when the dust and rubble tore Theo’s mother away in his dreams and brought Potter gasping back to reality in Boris’s arms.There would always be the night Potter showed him the painting.“You’re a blackout drunk, Potter, you know that?”or, Boris tries to remember why he took it





	they are one person, they are two alone, they are three together

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this while obsessively rereading the book for two weeks, drunk every night on champagne. I have never been compelled to write fic before, even after reading and loving the book, but the movie unlocked something within me and I’m not sure, but I think it had something to do with Aneurin Barnard’s stupid fake teeth and stupid cha-cha heels and stupid heart eye emoji energy. I took him into my heart and home and he is mine now. 
> 
> I kept talking to my friend (and wonderful beta reader for this fic, Caro) about how I wished in the book or movie I had gotten to see Boris decide to take the painting, so that’s what I set out to write. That is not what I ended up writing! This showed up and spilled out of me and so this is what you are getting. Please enjoy. This is my first fic ever but I had so much fun writing it will definitely not be my last!

_ Gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit he runs_

_Wishing he could fly_

_ Only to trip at the sound of goodbye _

_ Wordlessly watching he waits by the window and wonders _

_ At the empty place inside _

_ Heartlessly helping himself to the bad dreams he worries _

_ Did he hear a good-bye? _

_ Or even hello? _

_ They are one person _

_ They are two alone _

_ They are three together _

_ They are for each other _

i.

Boris feels a wave of incredulity-tinged panic wash over him as he stares across the table at Potter’s stunned face, mouthing words Boris cannot hear. He had never looked at it? Is joke, it must be joke. Boris had spent the years since Potter’s taxi crunched away over the sand-strewn streets--through the heat, away from him--imagining the moment that Potter realized what Boris had done. When would it happen? Right when he got off the bus, made his way to his fancy friends’ apartment? When he sat down on the floor of a room Boris imagined so different from their bedroom in Vegas--temperature-controlled, filled with light, missing the rank smell of chlorinated dog and regurgitated beer and teenage boy. Maids cleaned in the room--a great place for painting to live!--if, of course, the painting had made it there at all. 

For years, Boris had kept himself awake at night, imagining Potter’s anguish when he unwrapped his totem, only to be confronted by Boris’ name scratched in pen, to be greeted not by the shining, button-black eyes of his shrewd, beautiful bird, but by the dull gaze of a group of multi-colored children. 

But tonight- tonight he asks Potter _ you’re not angry? _ and Potter does not seem so. All tonight, Boris is becoming more and more optimistic--and after Potter brings him to Popchyk, is allowing himself a hint of hope, allowing himself to believe. Potter has gotten over it, has made peace with it. He’s grown up and so has Boris and now they are old, adults basically! Potter is even taller than him now (perhaps because he did not finish out his adolescence perpetually malnourished as Boris had). Forgiveness, she was in the air! They were old friends, it had been years since they’d seen each other--this long held thing between them was not going to ruin the night.

But no, it was not forgiveness. He had never opened it...what Boris had taken from Potter, Potter himself had not begun to guess. Boris wants to curl in on himself in his chair at the thought...his Theo...kept alive by a civics book wrapped in the Post. 

Potter sitting across from him now, head in his hands, color gone from his face--somehow this is so much worse than his childhood image of Theo’s teenaged fist shaking at the sky, cursing Boris’ name on the Upper East Side, vowing to never see him again. 

Boris suddenly feels as though the graffiti is peeling off the walls of this scuzzy Avenue C bar. The rough cement, no longer bound by the words scrawled across it, begins to crash down on to his head. A blender behind the bar whirs incessantly, a high-pitched whine that competes with the sound of a girl screeching with laughter in the back room. A small voice inside Boris cuts through the rushing in his ears, as he stares open-mouthed at Potter: _ so he wasn’t even mad at you. _ All these years Potter believed he’d had the painting; he had no idea what Boris had done. And he simply...didn’t bother to get in touch. No reason to be mad at Boris, no reason to stay away.

Although--the memory of the last thing he’d ever done to Potter, gentle, quick, over before it began. A kiss. And then nothing.

Maybe a reason to stay away.

In front of him, Potter is not okay. Still: “Are you okay?” Boris asks--something to say, at least. Always _ something _ to say, but never the thing he wanted. Always that way, with Potter.

His entire body is a taut line, straight-backed in his chair, his nails gouging dents in the soft, sticky wood of the table; Boris can practically see the coke grinding through his veins. Potter clenches his fists, in-out, in-out, and sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. “I--” he shakes his head, his eyes unfocused, staring at his hands. “How did you know I even have it?”

The present tense jars Boris. Schrödinger’s painting--Theo will have it until he doesn’t. The situation suddenly seems completely out of control, with Potter white and shaking across from him. But, Boris did not become a successful man by betraying how out of control he sometimes felt. 

He considers how to continue. He considers too long. 

“How do you know that?” Theo asks again, looking Boris in the eyes this time. “You went through my room? My things?” 

There were many nights Boris remembers that Theo doesn’t--always a gulf between them, these things unacknowledged. Boris would always know more about Potter than Potter would know about him. There would always be the sound of sobs echoing in Boris’s ears, always the vodka-soaked late night admissions, the jumping off the roof, the blood spattering on the tiles. Always the feeling of Potter’s breath hot against his neck as he said “she called me Puppy sometimes” and then, always Boris allowing himself to whisper _tsutsenya_ later when the dust and rubble tore Theo’s mother away in his dreams and brought Potter gasping back to reality in Boris’s arms. 

There would always be the night Potter showed him the painting. 

“You’re a blackout drunk, Potter, you know that?”

+

“Potter!” Boris shouts. “Potter, is he robot?” The man on screen was speaking, though his mouth was barely moving, stretched across his waxy face like a gash. And his eyes! They seemed set so far back, behind his skin, dark and glittering. 

“Potter!” Boris lifts one vodka-heavy limb to clap Theo on the shoulder. “Is mask or something?” 

“No!” Theo shouts back. He’s shitfaced, giggling and hiccuping at Boris’ question. It had not been a bad night--large (very large, very many) glasses of vodka on stomachs cramping with hunger, wrestling out by the pool, smoking cigarette after cigarette. The sadness that defined many of Theo’s drunken nights had not crept in, at least not yet, and now his back was pressed warm against Boris’s legs as Sean Connery hung out with a blonde babe in a cool apartment on television. So, Boris is thinking, yes, is good night. Maybe one Potter will not remember, but good all the same. 

“No…” Potter slurs finally. “No, he’s not a robot. He’s just got…” Potter begins gasping with laughter again, “metal hands?” 

This seems preposterous to Boris, who barks out a harsh laugh (_Ha! Harry Potter!_), and moves his hand up to Theo’s head, wanting suddenly for some reason to pet him as though he’s Popchyk. His hair is fine and soft, despite being dried out from chlorine and sun and the grit that is constantly swirling in their corner of the desert. He twirls a few sandy brown strands between his fingers as he briefly and drunkenly contemplates how the violence of their daytime touches could give way to this softness always at night.

(Already Boris is too accustomed to giving away this tenderness to Theo, although it doesn’t feel dangerous. It’s clear to Boris that Potter remembers almost none of it, and what he does remember he is content to pretend to forget.)

“Metal hands, ha! Robot makes far more sense...he has metal hands he can have whole metal body.” He continues to stroke Theo’s hair as he returns his attention to the television. Theo doesn’t seem to register the contact, his eyes intent on the screen. 

“Do you see--” Potter starts, lurching up and away from Boris, who’s arm stays for a moment outstretched, chasing warmth. On the television James Bond and Honey are giving each other significant looks over the painted head of an 18th century soldier. (See Boris knows things, is not Russian soldier either!) Theo staggers up off the couch and stands to face Boris, his body blocking the picture. 

“Move, Potter! You have seen before, I want to watch the movie!” 

But instead of moving out of the way, Theo leans down and catches his balance with both hands on Boris’s shoulders. 

“I have something I have to show you.” He has turned suddenly serious, and Boris’s stomach drops thinking about where this potential change in mood could take the night. He tries to steer them back to simpler territory.

“Fuck off, Potter! Look! I wanna hear what the robot man is saying!” He shoves at Potter’s hands, but he stays looming over Boris on the couch. Their alcoholic breath mingles together and Boris finds his eyes drawn, not for the first time, to Theo’s chapped lips. He shakes his head.

“Potter, I swear-” But Theo moves to clutch Boris’s face, crushing his cheeks between his hands, swaying slightly, probably about to topple back onto the couch, into his lap, at any second. 

“Boris. This is important. Boris, I _ have _to show you this, Boris.” Potter would not stop saying his name, would not stop talking. A wonderful thing he had to show Boris, the only person who could ever see it. “The only one, the only one,” he is saying. Boris, please!

“No, shut up, Potter!” Something about this is sitting uneasily in Boris’s chest, but he can’t figure out why. Nights have been much worse than this, have flipped into much more unsettling territory on a dime. This is tame: Potter has something to show Boris. But there is a manic gleam in Theo’s drink-clouded eyes that Boris has seen turn dark and stormy. He does not want to drag Theo out from the middle of the street tonight. He wants to watch_ Dr. No _. He wants to stroke his hair.

“Fuck you, Boris!” Theo shouts as he finally pushes himself off and begins to stomp upstairs, unsteady on his feet. 

Boris scoffs, yelling at Potter’s retreating form, “Fuck you, Boris!” mimicking him, “Always fuck you, Boris! Why never _ Thank you, Boris! Thank you for cleaning up my vomit and blood and putting up with fuck yous all night! _?” But Potter is gone, and Boris is alone. 

James Bond is still in the robot man’s very cool apartment, and Boris squints hard at the television, trying to check back in to the movie. But Theo is banging around upstairs, making unholy racket, and James Bond no longer seems as interesting as whatever it is Potter wants to show him. Boris begins to concentrate on getting up off the couch--a task he thought he would execute with more grace than Potter, but he ends up on the floor somehow, his head banging against the leg of the coffee table. As he groans and sits up, Potter comes down the stairs.

The drunken staggering is gone, replaced by slow, deliberate steps. Boris thinks of a bride coming down the aisle--step down, step together, careful. There is a rectangular package clutched in one hand, his other gripping the bannister as though his life depends on it, brows furrowed in extreme concentration behind the frames of his stupid Harry Potter glasses.

Theo continues his wedding march through the living room, stopping across from Boris, blocking the television once again. He gingerly lays the package down on the coffee table between them and then drops to the floor as though he is filled with rocks. 

“Ok, then. What is this?” Boris asks, hoping that by showing interest, by not resisting, their night can return to the calm they had achieved only an hour ago.

“This…” Theo trails off, splaying his hands flat over the pillowcase-wrapped mystery between them. He stares at it for a long moment, and then drags his eyes up to look at Boris with an intensity Boris has never seen without an accompanying act of suicidal recklessness.

“When my mother and I were in the museum…we were standing in front of this painting, this painting of a bird.” Theo is speaking slowly, trying to cut through the vodka that wants to mix up his words. “I remember…” He goes away for a moment, and although Boris is already used to this, he has to fight the urge to snap his fingers in front of Potter’s face. He wants to hear the story now, he wants to know what’s in the pillowcase on the coffee table. 

“The bird,” Theo is back, and whispering now for some reason. “It reminded me of her, of pictures I’d seen of her when she was little. And then…” Boris knows what came next. The redhead girl, the blast, the heat and dust and pain. 

He fights the urge to reach out and cover Potter’s hands with his own. 

Theo shakes his head and begins to slip the rectangle from its sheath, handling it with a care that impresses Boris, who is hyper aware of how drunk Theo is now. “I took it,” he says suddenly, hugging it close to his chest. “I took it, because, because this old man--he was dying, there was blood all over his head, burns, and he couldn’t breathe, but he kept talking to me--” 

Theo is breathing hard, and Boris should stop this story now, should snap Theo out of it--make a joke, hit him over the head, anything--but he’s frozen, feeling as though he is somewhere outside in the scorching Vegas heat and not here, not in control of this situation. Potter continues before Boris can figure out how to drag himself back to his body: “He told me to take it. And I knew I had to protect it, the old man said so, and...and my mother wouldn’t have liked it there, lying on the ground covered in dust.”

And then Potter is sliding a board out from the wrapping and placing the bird between them. 

It’s silent for a long moment and then Boris begins to laugh. All this time...petty shoplifting, so impressive is Boris! Here Potter, is easy just take this apple, take these sunglasses, the trick is staying invisible. All this time, and Potter has been a sophisticated art thief!

“Why are you laughing?” Theo cries, upset. “It’s true! It’s real!”

“No, no, Potter,” Boris holds up his hands, placating. “I mean, yes Potter! I see it is real!” And he does. What does Boris know about art, really, but he knows this is real. The bird stares up at him and Boris finds himself lost in the dark eyes, feels the glow from the sun-warmed wall illuminate his face. The living room crackles with energy, with a heat that cuts through the frigid AC and Boris knows it is concentrated in the painting; it thrums with something alive that rolls off of it in waves, waves that have Boris sitting back roughly against the couch. He feels far away, like he is peering in through the sliding glass door on the most important moment of his life. 

“I had to take it,” Theo is saying across from him. “I had to take it, I had to.” Repeating himself over and over again. “She loved it, she said she loved it, she walked away.” Boris is dimly aware of Theo beginning to rock back and forth slowly in front of him, but the small bird is growing larger and larger in his vision, blocking everything else out. 

It’s so beautiful. 

“Boris,” Potter chokes out, and Boris tears himself away from the bird’s steady gaze. He thinks Potter is the only person who could have made Boris stop looking at the painting. But, Theo has nothing else to say, he’s just staring at Boris. For a brief, disquieting moment, Potter is rendered blurry in front of him and Boris wonders if maybe he is crying. The light from _ Dr. No _ halos around Theo’s head and all of the sudden he is made of careful, fragile brushstrokes--all of the sudden there is a fine chain around his ankle.

Boris shakes his head, letting his hair tickle his eyes as Potter comes back into focus. He sighs. “Potter,” he says, and then breaks into a wicked grin, “is incredible! Look at you! A criminal mastermind! Owner of museum masterpiece!” 

Theo grimaces and then, urgently: “No, Boris, I couldn’t leave it! It would have been destroyed, someone would have _ actually _stolen it! I had to save it, I had to, I--” Potter is beginning to repeat himself again. He grips his knees and stares at the bird with wide, frantic eyes. 

Boris crawls around the coffee table and places his hands on Theo’s shoulders, forcing him to look at him. He will fix this, he will fix this night. “Potter, is alright, you know? I understand, I do. You have saved this little bird, yes? And he is so beautiful!” 

Theo considers this. Boris holds his breath. 

“Yea,” Theo finally says, meeting Boris’s eyes, his voice cracking slightly. A small, slow grin. “Yea, I saved it. I- my mother, she said that the things we save from history are miracles.” Theo glances at his bird and Boris moves his left hand slightly, so that he is cupping the back of Theo’s neck. He gently begins to move his thumb up and down, catching the back of Theo’s hairline, trying to impart the feeling of _ calm, calm, calm. _

“The painter--he died in an explosion.” _ Ah, _Boris understands suddenly. 

“But the painting survived, yes?” Theo nods. Boris moves closer--both hands holding the back of Theo’s head now--and presses their foreheads together. 

“Well done, Potter,” he whispers, as though Theo is the one who created the masterpiece lying among their cigarette butts and empty cracker packets and half-full glasses of vodka. “Well done.” And, because Potter won’t remember this in the morning, Boris presses a kiss to his temple.

Theo smiles.

+

Boris is agitated as he walks away from Hobart and Blackwell, feeling lost without Popchyk and Potter, even though they had only come back into his life twenty-four hours before. He tries consciously to loosen up as he dodges the fat drops of this afternoon’s rain shower, pelting down on him from the Village awnings. 

He cannot get over Potter-- so intent on _ why. Why did you take it? _ he cried! As though Potter was so conclusive, so black and white, so crystal clear on why _ he _had taken it from museum in first place!

Why did Boris take it? He was truthful with Potter--chance makes the thief. He had not been looking to steal it when he came across it in the locker. He had barely (Truly! Only few times!) thought about stealing it at all. But he had never forgotten how the living room had felt that night, charged with a centuries-old presence, with the weight of understanding. He had felt so close to Potter then, when they had propped the bird up against the turned-off television and sat together, staring, enveloped in the painting’s wonder. What came later--their drunken fumblings, rough touches and rolled back eyes and pleasure, pure pleasure--was a different kind of closeness, one he’d never give away. But still, he thought about the painting, about the way Theo looked in its light. 

So maybe he knows why he took it. But, he has great memory--Potter, not so much. And Boris, well, he has different life now. He has a wife, and children, and this thing with Potter, it was many years ago. Explaining how it felt when he realized what the tape-wrapped monstrosity was in Potter’s locker, explaining what it was that compelled him to reach in and grab it, to wrap his civics book carefully with the same chaotic mix of newsprint and tape--it is no longer worth it, it no longer makes as clear sense as it did when they were sharing a bed together every night. 

Flashes of the long lines of their adolescent bodies pressed together on the carpet, Popchyk on their shared lap, as they stared at the painting--Boris could still feel Potter’s drunken heat heavy on his right side, clear as if his arm were around him right now, and not a decade ago, in the living room, staring at his bird. 

But Potter is not here--Boris left him surrounded by his furniture, by all his old things. And Boris, despite his best efforts, is cold and wet. And alone.

Finally, Boris sees his car idling up ahead. He yanks open the door and grunts hello to Gyuri, signaling him to drive, and flops back, pouting in his seat. He feels terrible, anxious and buzzing, his stomach a lead weight that may as well reside all the way down in his heeled Chanel boots.

Boris sniffs hard as he heads to his hotel room, still coming down from the revelry of the previous night, of the morning. Potter’s voice echoes in his head as it did the entire drive, cracking as though he is still going through puberty, and not a grown man who has built a life for himself. _ Why did you take it?-- _the anguish Boris imagined lying in Xandra’s bed coloring every word. 

Why did he take it? He knows, has admitted to himself before. But when he finally saw Potter again--the same glasses, the same undeniable sorrow, the same sandy brown hair, same smile that showed his pointed eye teeth (Boris loved Potter’s smile, loved when it stretched slow across his face, as though considering whether Boris earned it or not, finally rewarding him with a glimpse of his teeth, straight and white up front despite their diet of candy and cigarettes and alcohol)--the words, the logic flew out of him.

Why did he take it? Is too much right now. He prepares a hit. He is a weekend user--a tourist he tells Potter--but after the last twenty-four hours he deserves this. 

_ Deserves _\--that kind of thinking can get a junkie into trouble, and he has things to do, paintings to track down, amends to make. But the crash from the cocaine has been hard, and he cannot get his mind to calm down, to stop thinking of Vegas, of AC-blasted nights tangled in the sheets together. 

Medical-grade tourniquet tight around his bicep, Boris thinks of Theo, fourteen years old and sadder than anyone Boris had ever met. Theo, something delicate and fragile--no, something crackling with strength despite circumstance--no, still that was not exactly right, although both true all the same. 

He slips the needle into his arm with swift, practiced hands. The burden of his betrayal becomes lighter.

+

The night before Boris takes the painting, he is not with Potter. 

These nights Boris spends with Kotku are defined simply in his mind as “time not spent with Potter” and Boris declines to examine that any further, he just knows this: there’s time with Potter, and there’s everything else. 

So here he is, sleepless at the Three R’s, Kotku crashed out next to him. She’d passed out an hour ago, after Boris had gotten her off, two fingers jack-hammering back and forth, loud and excited noises from them both, headboard banging, hand gripped around his cock--whole nine yards! 

As she breathes steadily beside him, Boris wonders if he could extricate himself, call a Lucky Cab (with what money, Boris!), and ride all the way out to Desert End Road. Maybe he would throw rocks at Potter’s window (or grains of sand by the handful), maybe sing the Velvet Underground loud and accented up at the moon, before sneaking through the back door and into his bed. 

Boris shoves this away--why think like this of Theo when his needs are being met? He turns towards Kotku and throws an arm over her torso. She is sleeping deeply, and doesn’t turn towards him, so he pulls her to him and presses his nose against her neck, inhaling--_ Cashmere Glow _ body mist, stale blunt and whiskey, something sharp like iron, like blood. He sighs.

Potter does not like Kotku, and this gives Boris vicious, sparkling glee.

Because Boris loves Kotku. He loves her tiny body, her tiny breasts, her tiny skirts. Gathering her small frame into his arms at night settles something in him, quiets the screeching _ want _ that sometimes seems as though it is seeping from his every pore.

It does not feel like home, but who is so lucky as to find all that? 

Boris closes his eyes and focuses on slowing his breathing to match Kotku’s, focuses on her taut, boyish stomach underneath his forearm and tries to ignore the feeling of _ forward, forward, always we must move! _ that sometimes threatens to overwhelm him. 

In time, he drifts into something like sleep. 

_ They’re in their room. Potter turns towards Boris from his side of the bed, gazing at the glowing cherry of Boris’s cigarette. He isn’t wearing his glasses, and Boris can see clearly his light-colored eyes peering at him through the dark, illuminated only by the burning red coal and a sliver of yellow light sneaking underneath the bathroom door. _

_ Potter takes the cigarette from Boris’s lips and drags. It should not feel like kissing, but it does. _

_And then their mouths are on each other and they really are kissing, the cigarette vanished and the room no longer dark. The ceiling is gone, the desert moon casting everything with a pale, unearthly glow. Potter’s bed is mired in a mound of red sand that cascades on top of their grasping, suddenly naked bodies. _

_ Boris is aware of tears sliding down his face, of Potter whispering “ne plach-don’t cry” against Boris’s lips as their bodies move together. _

_ The sand is still sliding down all around them, covering them like a blanket and then Potter is choking and Boris is swallowing grit as Potter shoves him down against the dune, their bed lost to the desert. _

_ “BORIS!” Potter screams, sand spilling out of his mouth, landing in Boris’s. Tears of mud streak down Potter’s cheeks as Boris looks up in horror. “Why did you do this to me?” _

_ “Why did you do this to me?” Theo’s voice echoes and Boris finds himself lying alone in a brackish pool of water at the bottom of a rust red canyon. The same moon glares down at him from the wide open sky, scattered with stars--none of them Boris recognizes without Theo next to him to anchor him, to lazily trace the shapes of gods and artists and lovers thrown up into the deep purple heavens. _

_ And then, the sky is gone, the roof is there. It’s their bedroom and Potter is cradled in his arms, glasses still on his face. Boris gently removes them-- “your specs, Potter” he mumbles fondly, pressing one of his private kisses to Theo’s forehead. He looks up, content, and is cracked across the face by his father’s cane. _

_ “Nemaye moho syna!” his father screams as he bears down on Boris and Theo tangled together. _

_ The cane becomes a pipe wrench and Boris knows what comes next. He needs to roll over and shield Potter but he is paralyzed with a terror that is choking him, seizing his body into a painful, unnatural contortion-- _

Somewhere in the Three R’s a man is yelling in Spanish and pale morning light is filtering in through ragged curtains that flutter weakly in the breeze of the fan. 

Boris jerks awake with his arms wrapped tightly around Kotku--still totally out, sweaty from Boris’s clinging--and gasps as the last dregs of the dream leach from his consciousness. 

He glances at the giant fossil of a digital clock on the nightstand and shoots up. They have to catch the bus, Boris is going to go to school today. He’s unsettled and he’s hungry; he needs something to clear out the cross-faded fog of his night with Kotku. He shakes her shoulder (_ vstavay, let’s go to school today _) while snatching up his scattered clothes from the floor. 

Eventually they are both up, both clothed and on the bus. Boris glares out the window, head stuffed full of wool, thinking about what he will eat from the vending machine, and then starts. Hands in pockets--jacket, pants, front and back--nothing. 

He has no money. Not even enough spare change for a stupid bag of Doritos. His stomach growls as though angry at him, as though it is not always empty.

He takes a deep breath and tries to focus on the cool-ish glass of the bus window pressed against his forehead. Potter will have money. He will be at school and soon Boris will see him and he will have rude words and concerned glances and most importantly, cash. 

The bus screeches up to the doors as Boris repeats _ 20-17-55 _to himself, knowing that in Potter’s locker awaits a few dollars left there just for him.

ii.

Boris finds himself in Amsterdam near Christmastime three years after the painting. He thought he’d stay away for awhile, but jobs had brought him back and then he found himself back and back again. 

At first there was some time when it was all here and there, occasional heroin, occasional coke, spending the reward, considering his options. But now he is back in the fold, dealing and selling and setting up trades. Is who he is; there is something about the long line of his expensive coat concealing a gun that feels like an inevitability, like destiny. 

His heels click and catch in the tram tracks as he crosses the center of Leidseplein, full with tourists and strung with festive lights. He’s finished everything he needed to--the money is in the right hands and so is the product. But still he is uneasy--the area in which the deal took place is too populated; amateur hour it feels to Boris. And then there is a feeling--the feeling of being watched. He glances quickly behind him at the floodlit facade of the Stadsschouwburg and observes nothing suspicious, but the weight of eyes on the back of his neck remains. 

He heads south, the throngs of people around him thinning only slightly as he passes the Vondelpark and continues on through narrow streets, away from the center of the city. 

A dim memory comes to him--driving around streets very much like this one (or maybe this very one?) with his arm hot and painful, Potter a statue next to him--terrified, shell-shocked. Boris had wanted nothing more than to pull over and get his hands on Potter, bring him out of this, talk him down; a brief and ridiculous fantasy of transporting them both somewhere warm and safe where they could breathe deeply and slowly, together for the rest of their lives. But there was work to be done, always work to be done. Boris had been babbling, rattling off street names, telling Potter about Martin--trying to keep his head clear, keep his mind off the bloody hole in his arm. He had been lucky it was not worse, he knew. But it hurt like a bitch all the same. 

And then Potter had unfrozen and fumbled through the glove compartment--_ what was he doing? _ Boris remembers wondering, still keeping up a steady stream of chatter mostly for himself. And then Potter, delirious and far away--in another country, practically!--was saying _ your arm _and wrapping a phone charger around Boris’s bicep as though Boris was bleeding out, near death, and not just uncomfortable. 

Boris smiles as the scene plays out in his head, clear despite his state of mind at the time and the few years that have passed. Potter probably would have no memory of it--which is, of course, par for their course. But Boris remembers, and finds a little joy in it all the same.

As he continues to walk he manages to loosen up, even begins looking for a coffee shop in which he could grab a quick nightcap--a joint and some espresso would not go amiss right now. There was a good one around here Boris knew; it had loads of plants and a little upstairs section and sometimes the lady would make you cheese toast if you were charming, and Boris was always charming. 

It was definitely near here--on Flinckstraat, maybe? Or something like that. He stops and stares around him, too sober to suddenly be this disoriented, and that’s when he hears his name.

“Boris!” It’s quiet, coming from a little ways back, across the street. Boris stiffens, placing his right hand along the opening of his coat--the anxiety of the night’s proceedings, the eyes he’d felt earlier, making him more jumpy than he might be normally. He keeps walking forward, ready to do what needs to be done, when it comes again, like a question this time. “Boris?”

He knows that voice.

Three years since he’s heard that voice. 

Antwerp had been nothing, playing nursemaid, watching movies, not even touching Potter at all really, which had not been Boris’s intention. But instincts forged a decade ago kicked in and left him doing only the things he knew would save Potter, and at the time it was not a repeat of their adolescent tomfoolery. 

So Boris took him to clinic, got him penicillin, watched _ It’s A Wonderful Life _ and drank broth. And when Potter left (got on a plane and never stopped, plane after plane, place after place, nothing like _ home, _ nothing like _ stay _), Boris shoved it all down as he’d always had. Kept tabs, sure. But he had not reached out, had not texted or called or sent letter or stolen painting as message (the dramatics of Boris’s daydreams!). No, only gone about his business, leaving Potter to his own.

And now Potter is here, not even standing in shadow. Across the street, under the Christmas lights, he cuts an impressive figure, tall and lean and bespectacled. Expensive coat, expensive shoes. Is almost not suspicious that he’s calling Boris’s name in a cosmopolitan city. 

The same cosmopolitan city in which they’d killed men only few years earlier, but still.

“You’ve been following me Potter?” Boris calls to him. He’s almost shocked at how steady, how jovial his voice sounds. He’d forgotten how well he lied to Theo--the role of protector a heady thing. 

Potter, of course doesn’t answer, so Boris sighs and doubles back across the street, checking briefly for cyclists who would run him down quick, no problem--this fucking city. 

“Potter!” Boris greets him, happy he is here, really! Truly! Boris was not sure they would ever see each other again, sometimes imagining the events of Amsterdam as the asteroid that knocked their planets out of orbit like the taxi in Vegas had, like the painting did--preventing either from reaching out to the other, a perpetual stalemate of misunderstanding and shame. He had become certain recently that this whole thing must be finished--painting hanging once again in museum, both of them on their individual courses, fulfilling their lot in life. But they’re here now, gravitational pull solid once again.

Boris opens his arms to embrace Potter, who steps back at his approach. Boris is hurt in spite of himself. When has he ever gotten what he truly wanted? 

“Potter, happy to see you,” he says, imparting as much sincerity into the words as he can without sounding, well, insincere. Boris is a liar by trade, and is one with Potter always, but he can tell the truth, too. He hopes Potter can hear the difference.

“Potter,” Boris says again as he reaches him, still standing inert under the yellow glow of the streetlamp. He claps Theo on the shoulder in lieu of the planned hug, waiting for a response, an explanation--Boris knows why _ he _ is here in Amsterdam, but Potter--well, Potter he could not even begin to guess.

Theo stares at him, and then he breaks into a grin, slow like when they were teenagers--_ here, you earned this, _his smile says.

“What are you doing here?” Boris asks when Potter still does not speak, desperate to take this interaction anywhere but the moment they separate once again. 

‘I--” Theo reaches his hand up and covers Boris’s on his shoulder, squeezing tight, holding on as though letting go would mean disaster. This is closer to Theo than Boris ever imagined he’d be again, despite seeing him in every man with glasses, with brown hair, with a camel coat, with a package tucked under his arm. Despite hanging around all over the Netherlands, as though Boris could find Potter in the last place he left him, if only he looked hard enough, waited long enough.

“I--” Theo starts again. A breath, then: “I’m sorry I followed you, I just saw you walk by and I…” he trails off and Boris waits. “I couldn’t not,” Potter finishes. 

“It is okay, Potter! Of course, is okay!” and he pulls Theo into his arms, hand over wrist on Theo’s back, ignoring the stiffness of his body, which relaxes eventually--as Boris knew it would--and he wraps his arms around Boris in kind. 

A moment--deep breaths, taking in the scent of each other, of a city that ties them together. Boris thinks as he often does of the bird, of the board between them on the coffee table, between them now in the street, between them all these years.

He unwraps his arms, steps back, sighs. Where this night will go now he can only guess. They are not in Vegas anymore and Boris is unfamiliar with the frequency with which Theo lays down in the streets these days. 

“I did not think you’d come back here” Boris says, and then grimaces. Why give reason for Theo to leave? Stupid, self-destructive nonsense…

“No, me neither,” Theo says with a calm that surprises Boris. “I guess--” a sharp inhalation, “I guess I was finished. Finished with what I needed to do anyways, and the last piece was here and I had to come and so I just...stayed.” Potter gazes at him from behind the glasses that have not changed in what feels like Boris’s whole lifetime. “I’ve been here for almost two weeks, and I kept thinking of you, seeing you everywhere. It felt like I stayed because I was...waiting for you. And then tonight I was sitting outside, just having a drink, enjoying my solitude, and this time it really was you I saw. Same black coat, same silly shoes,” Potter laughs as he looks down and lightly kicks Boris’s boots, which are extremely expensive, thank you very much. 

“Well,” Boris closes his eyes and breathes deeply again, trying to center himself on this strange planet. “I am glad to see you.” _ Honesty, honesty _ \--this is all Boris can think. _ If you don’t want to lose him again it must be honesty. _

“Where are you staying?” Boris asks, hesitant, hoping that this attempt at forward motion will not stall their reunion. 

“I’m up on Prinsengracht, back the way we came. By Leidseplein. I had to buy back a piece--an early Georgian that Hobie had changed the feet on, you know--” Potter continues but Boris is only vaguely listening, buzzing with the energy of reunion, of togetherness. He places his hand on Potter’s shoulder and steers him up the street, south, the way he’d been going. Potter chatters on about types of wear here and the origin of claw-and-ball feet there; Boris nods along, guiding Theo towards the coffee shop he knows must be up ahead, resisting the urge to move his hand down to the small of Theo’s back, to stop them both right there between the buildings as old as Theo’s furniture and press their mouths together. 

La Tertulia envelops them in its warmth once Boris remembers where it is, and by now he and Potter are chatting back and forth, old friends, no baggage. He buys two pre-rolls, two espressos, and _ pretty please cheese on toast? _from the stout, craggy woman behind the counter. Goods in hand, he and Potter make their way upstairs where they sit surrounded by whitewashed walls and green ferns and the soft bubbling of a fountain in the corner. 

They’re the only people in the shop, so Boris begins the complicated dance of holding Potter’s hand--something that used to be second nature, but is so difficult and calculated now. Alternative Christmas music plays from speakers hidden somewhere in this zen garden, and Boris inches closer and closer across the table with his right hand, holding his personal joint in his left, taking a hit--the contradictory feeling of _ heavy-lightness _ wrapping him in his high. 

Their fingers are brushing now and Potter falters in what he’s been saying about time spent in different exotic locales, fancy people and fancy food and heavy-backed chairs with the wrong arcading.

Silence. Boris takes another hit as he moves to grip Potter’s hand in his, waiting to see what reaction he will get. Sharp rebuff? Gentle push back? Or has Theo hit his joint enough (he really might have, he’s smoking it like a cigarette, fast and deep--as though there’s a whole pack waiting for him in his pocket), to reciprocate?

“Boris…” Potter exhales as he allows himself (his hand), to be held.

“How is your lovely fiancée, Potter?” _ Coward! _ Boris curses at himself. Why the fuck did he say that? Boris imagines her cool, lovely _ blondeness _pouring like ice cold water over Theo. What was the least sexy thing Boris could have brought up? It was this. 

“Oh…” Theo inhales off the joint again. “Uh, we are not--well, we’re not quite fiancés right now.” He pauses, and then mockingly, fondly, “How is your wife?”

Potter does not move to pull his hand away at all. 

Boris's heart swells dangerously in his chest, and as the Christmas music plays softly over the scene, he feels little like the Grinch, growing three sizes that day. 

Boris ignores Potter’s jab at Astrid, much like Boris ignores Astrid most of the time. But, _ honesty, honesty _ a voice chants inside him, so he begins brushing his thumb across the back of Potter’s hand in lieu of answering the question. After taking another courage-making hit, Boris says: “I have missed you so much, Potter.” A deep breath: “Every day I have missed you. Since the painting, even since Vegas…” and then that’s enough honesty for Boris. He inhales until the roach is burning his fingers and he has to stub it out in the ashtray between them, trying so very valiantly not to grip Potter by the shoulders and yell _ say something!, _ to ask with an open heart _ did you miss me, too? Is that why you followed me, called my name in the street? _

“I missed you, too,” Potter quietly says, as if in answer to Boris’s silent, panicked questions. His eyes rest on Boris’s thumb that continues to swipe across his own. “I thought I deserved to be alone…” Boris lets out the breath he’d been holding, thick with acrid smoke, less out of relief than of the memory that overtakes him: Potter laying in the street, on the playground, covered in sand in the middle of the desert. _ I want to be alone, Boris! Leave me here, just leave me here! I wish I were dead! Fuck off! _

“I don’t want you to be alone,” is all Boris can think to say, but it’s somehow, blessedly, the right thing. Potter smiles softly at him and puts out the end of his own joint, moving to stand but not letting go of Boris’s hand. 

Boris is up immediately and following Potter down the stairs, giving a small wave to the lady as they stumble outside, pausing, deciding which way to turn. 

“My hotel is close,” Potter says, his voice cracking slightly like it always did when he was nervous. It cracked all through their adolescence and to Boris it sounds like puberty, like growing pains, long limbs and shiny, sunburnt skin and the smell of them together, _ together. _

“Yes, you are at Diiker?” Boris asks, and regrets it when Potter turns to him, startled. “I just mean...Prinsengracht and Leidsestraat… that’s the hotel there.” It was not far from where Boris had set Potter up on their fateful trip three years ago--similar layout, a narrow corner building, steep staircases and airy rooms and all the amenities. 

“Yea, that’s where I am.” Theo seems uneasy and Boris curses himself once again.

“Am not keeping tabs on you, Potter, swear!” He holds up his left hand like a boy scout, his right still hanging onto Theo as though his life depends on it. “If anything, you are the one following me tonight!”

Theo huffs out a laugh at that and begins walking back in the direction of his hotel, hand still wrapped in Boris’s. 

They’re let in after ringing the late night bell, and wind through the hotel, up a short staircase, into an elevator, more stairs, narrow and leaning. Up and down, through tight, meandering hallways that are a Dutch calling card, Boris holds Potter hand--sweaty, but if he lets go who knows what will happen? The whole building might collapse. Finally, in front of the door to his room, Theo drops Boris’s hand to place the key in the lock, and Boris thinks he’s never been so cold in his life.

Then they’re sitting on the edge of the bed, and suddenly there is awkwardness between them in this fancy hotel room--two beds pushed together to make one, a wardrobe against the wall, sliver of light from the bathroom around the corner. It feels like Vegas and yet it doesn’t--the light so different, the temperature, the years...the painting. The bird that they both know better than anyone else sits between them, too.

Which one of them will be the first to breach the divide?

Boris always thought of himself as the courageous one, as the leader, the protector. But, in truth, he knew he was a coward--always waiting for that fifth glass of vodka, the third or fourth joint tossed half-burned into a recently drained beer bottle. He’d kissed Potter many times, but none that Theo’d remembered, none they’d acknowledged. Even the last time… they’d never said anything about it. 

And if Potter had said anything, what would Boris have done, what _ did _ he do? He’d have run. Like he’d run to Kotku, to his _ wife. _ That’s how he knew he was a coward. 

But tonight, _ honesty _thrums through his veins with an insistence he can’t ignore (through the floaty feeling of his high, the slowing speed of his mind), and Boris thinks maybe this time he can really be brave. 

But it’s Theo. 

It’s Theo who presses his lips against Boris’s, their hands still clasping each other atop the white hotel sheets. It’s Theo who moves towards him, angling his body so that they can slide their hands up and hold each other. Boris wonders if Christmas music is really playing outside--_ holy, holy, holy _\--or if it is angels in heaven singing at the meeting of their mouths, the sharing of their breath. 

Boris tries to deepen the kiss, chasing Theo’s lips as he pulls away, shrugs off his coat, and then climbs on top of Boris, pressing him back onto the bed. 

Boris is reminded somewhere deep in the back of his mind of teenaged Theo staring down at him from above, mud on his face, anguish in his voice. 

“What’s wrong?” Potter whispers, pulling away, balancing himself on his forearms, one on either side of Boris’s head.

Boris wipes away the tears that have suddenly appeared in his eyes.

“Is nothing,” he chokes out gruffly, leaning up to catch Potter’s mouth in his once again.

“Don’t cry,” Potter murmurs between kisses, his hands moving to Boris’s face, thumbs brushing across cheekbones. _ Ne plach _ Theo’s voice says in his head, and Boris fights more tears, pressing every inch of his body against Theo’s, feeling a flickering energy that he has not felt since the night of _ Dr. No, _of turning off the television to place the painting against it, of staring at the bird, staring at Theo. 

They kiss for a long while, the room growing hotter, their positions changing as Boris rolls on top of Theo and bites at his bottom lip, at his neck, at his collarbone. He had been here before, but then again, never quite like this. In the intervening years, he’d imagined it so many times, and yet he had never imagined it; his mind could not have colored in all the corners, could not have concocted a semi-sober meeting in such roiling, technicolor glory.

Coats, shoes, shirts, pants, glasses, even gun which thankfully Theo had not noticed--all gone now as they clutch at each other in bed, the moon shining in through the open curtains, illuminating Potter’s freckled chest, Boris’s scarred back and arms and neck and hips…

Potter is kissing above Boris’s faded track marks, at the spot where the bullet grazed, knotted and light purple, not his most impressive scar for sure. But something about it undoes Boris as he remembers Theo appearing from around the car, remembers the look on his face when he decided to grab the gun, to pull the trigger, to save Boris’s life. An unholy noise escapes him as Potter’s mouth travels up his bicep, along his chest, kissing all the way, finally pressing his nose into the space between Boris’s neck and shoulder, inhaling as Boris used to do when they were children.

"Did you mean it?” Potter says against his neck, lips brushing against the spot right the base that leaves Boris shaking. 

“Mean...what...Potter?” Boris breathes heavily as Theo drops his head to stare at him, close enough that his eyes seem to be every color one sees in the Netherlands, watery blue and pale gold and something diffused that is not so much color as light. 

“When you said that what we used to do was something else for me than it was for you? When we were talking...before.” 

It’s not what Boris expects, and it takes him out of the moment as he tries to remember whatever stupid thing he said that made Potter take his lips off of Boris’s throat. 

He’s cold again suddenly, feeling too far away from what he’s always thought of as his sun, warmth without the harshness. But still he is always getting burned.

“Potter…” Boris remembers _ we were young, we needed girls-- _just another manifestation of his cowardice. “Potter, I only meant that…” He keeps trailing off, god, he sounds like Potter! Unable to finish single sentence! 

His mind can’t string together thoughts, the imprint of Theo’s touch sending sparks through him. For a moment he is a magnet, pressed down by some inexplicable force, vibrating with powerful energy. He thinks he should be more tolerant to this feeling, but he also knows this is not just the weed. 

Boris has been without words for longer than he’s used to, his brain unspooling and spiraling away into glittery atoms that dissolve in the air of the moon-soaked hotel room. _ Honesty _is a word with no meaning now, and he can’t bring himself to allow it to pass through his lips.

Theo looks concerned--a role reversal--as Boris sits back, still straddling Potter who grips Boris’s thighs and stares, but otherwise gives him nothing.

Whatever he says now, Potter is still below him, Boris’s pale hands spread out on his bare ribcage. Whatever he says, they are in this bed together and they will both remember it in the morning.

“Theo, you of all people must understand there are things we say that we ourselves do not understand.” Silence. “I only mean, I say this thing because--” God, the agony of explaining himself! “Potter there were so many nights you did not remember, so many moments where we...we were something Potter! I know is true, stars flung up into space, together, the last people on Earth in your bed. It felt so huge to me, Potter, and so I made it all seem very small.” 

“I am kissing you like this all the time when we were young, and you never remembered. Was only for me, and I was so selfish! A coward! So I say, hey! It must mean more to me, and so I must make it less. Does not hurt so badly that way, Potter. You understand. So I think, you know, _ I forget Potter like Potter forgets me _ and everything will be okay! But I never forget you, Theo. I could not! I had your painting and I carried you everywhere.” 

All of Boris’s words hang around them in the air; he can see the lines of truth swirling and undulating in an imagined breeze. The silence is unbearable, and then Theo pushes himself up, careful not to displace Boris from his lap. 

“I remember it.” Potter’s eyes drift left and right, not meeting Boris’s stunned gaze, and he wonders if Theo, too, sees the admission scrawling itself tight around them. “I mean”--a retraction--“I remember some of it, for sure, Boris. The way you-” he chokes on the word, “_ held _me and...whispered stuff in all your languages and I remember kissing you, Boris, and-” apologetically, “other stuff, too.” Theo’s hands move up Boris’s thighs. “I remember this.” 

A deep desire to _ run _is building inside Boris, a fight-or-flight instinct he thinks he was maybe born with. How to survive now that he has Potter underneath him? How to contend with the agony of getting what he wants, when he knows all he’s done?

“I took your painting.”

Potter is startled by this turn, but he shakes his head. “And you got it back.” 

“You don’t remember showing it to me,” Boris says quietly, fighting the urge to reach out and touch Potter’s hair. 

“No, I don’t.” Theo admits plainly. They have been over this before, so what are they doing talking about it now. Potter thankfully does not ask _ why does it matter? _because Boris would not have an answer. 

“Was it like this?” Potter does finally ask, his hands holding Boris’s hips loosely, moving lightly up and down. “Did we-”

Boris shakes his head, awkwardly covers Theo’s hands with his own. “No, not like this…” _ Honesty. _“Was like this, but, different. At the time...maybe was almost better.” 

Theo gently wraps his arms around Boris’s waist. “What did we do?” 

Boris thinks he might come undone right then and there. He’s back in the living room, bony and cold and hungry and wasted. He’s saying _ well done _ and kissing Potter’s forehead. He’s turning back towards the painting, towards its inexorable draw, reaching out to grab it, looking back at Potter. A nod of the head, permission, salvation. Boris grips the sides lightly with his palms, trying so hard to let as little of himself as possible tarnish this thing pulsing with life. Self-control is something he has little experience with, but he knows what the painting deserves. He places every ounce of gentleness he has into the touch, imagining for a brief moment it is Theo shining below him. _ Potter turn off television. _A whispered command, he’s already halfway there. The TV is still warm when he sets the painting up, but he hopes it will be ok. And then he’s crawling back and leaning against the coffee table, placing himself practically in Potter’s lap. They stare for hours--Boris thinks he has memorized every inch of it, never imagining just how well he would come to know this little friend. Potter has his arm around him. He thinks he is finally warm.

“Boris, what-”

“We just looked at it.” Boris answers from years ago, continents away. “We set it up and we just-just looked.” 

“You never said anything about it.” Potter speaks these words against Boris’s chest, wrapped up together now, arms around each other’s backs, heads on each other’s shoulders. How they got there (here, now) Boris can only guess. 

“Yes, well.” God, he wants to cry again. “Painting was your special secret.” _ And you were mine, _he cannot bring himself to say.

Potter hears him anyway. 

+

The next morning they board a train. 

It’s a short trip, through cold, grey countryside that Boris knows whips by gold and pink and red with tulips in April. 

They get off at a stop that feels dangerous, walking close but not touching. The station spits them out into the city center--large, stylish buildings, all curved metal angles and glass and stone. So different from the colorful, leaning facades of the city they just left. Still there’s water everywhere, but unlike the canals in Amsterdam--where Boris always sees some 17th-century version of himself staring back at him--they look like themselves in its reflection. 

Although he has never been to The Hague (home of international justice not choice place to do illegal business, ha!) it feels a bit to Boris like they are returning to the scene of a crime. Potter is pale next to him as they walk, nervous but not gone, turning to Boris to flash a wan smile when he feels eyes on him. 

Boris stops when they are only a street away. “I am thinking this is maybe not great idea, Potter.” So unlike him to be the one who voices objections, fears. As soon as it is out of his mouth Boris knows he’s wrong. Well, maybe not wrong--is probably not a good idea--but he knows it doesn’t matter.

Theo keeps walking. Boris follows.

The museum is a house, the back of which rises almost like an island out of one of those Dutch pools that is not pond or lake or canal, not large enough for one or small enough or deep enough, going nowhere. It’s an old house that looks like it could contain many of Theo’s treasured antiques, but the entrance lobby dips underground and is aggressively modern--pale stone and high white ceilings surrounded by glass and cement.

The place is busy despite having just opened, and as they shoulder their way up the stairs Boris gives in to himself and rests his hand on Theo’s back lightly, trying to quiet the feeling that they are about to lose each other. 

The upper levels are ornate and jewel-toned, the polar opposite of the cool entrance hall--dark wood and brocade wallpaper and the heavy hush of history. Boris can feel Potter’s muscles tighten and shift beneath his wool coat as they glide silently through the rooms, past people holding up iPhones through which Boris can see bright flowers as pinpricks, rotting fruit and skulls turned into bits of light; pictures of pictures, taken and painted to remind them that one day they will die--digital _ memento mori _, lost in the cloud.

They pass Ter Borchs, Avercamps, De Hoochs, Steens--all with congregations gathered around. According to the folded paper map clutched in Boris’s hand, they are close. He thinks he can feel the painting long before they can see it. He knows its textures, its colors--each and every speck of white and yellow paint imitating soft feathers and sunlight--deep down in what he can only imagine is his soul. But more than that, he knows its power, he knows what it feels like to stand in front of--to hold, to hand over--something that has been stared at for centuries. A German philosopher--Potter would know the one--wrote about the _ aura _, and Boris knows that is what is reaching to him through space--a bird staring out, imbued with the gaze of thousands across time. 

They pass through the room before, darker than the others with heavy red fabric wallpaper. The paintings on the wall, they’re all Rembrandts, Boris realizes. He’s sure he’s making a face--he’s never much cared for the chiaroscuro portraits of this man or that lady, this saint and this saint and oh, here’s a bunch of Jesus. _ Not a seascape? _Potter once asked, and no, always these men and women, sometimes many men and women, with dark clothes and white ruffs and wide, rolling eyes. 

Boris continues in his stride, but Potter stops. “Potter--” Boris hisses, as his hand slips involuntarily from Theo’s back. But Theo’s eyes are fixed and shining on the painting to their right, visible through the crowd. He moves slightly towards it, away from Boris, and then stops as though he’s hit an invisible wall. 

These past twenty-four hours have been a lot for Boris, and he is not accustomed to feeling this lost, to not knowing even a little what to do. Potter is staring with a familiar and alarming intensity at these men--many men with many eyes staring anywhere but the dead body before them. Dark clothes and ruffs.

“Potter,” Boris tries again. He moves to put his arm around Theo, whose tears are gathering at the corners of his eyes beneath his glasses--specks of white paint, catching flickering light. He stays stiff and staring. 

For a long while, neither of them speak, and Boris sinks into a trance, lost in the odd proportions of the pale, lifeless, body--tendons exposed, mouth slightly agape, eyes blessedly closed. He doesn’t realize that he’s hanging on to Potter like he might disappear at any moment, like he might walk into the painting right now, like an explosion might tear him away. 

Finally, Theo breathes in deeply and shakes his head, bringing his hand up to swipe under his glasses.

He turns in to Boris, and with Boris’s arm still around Theo, it’s almost like they are holding each other, in front of all these people, these ancient doctors--in front of history itself.

Another breath, hot on Boris’s cheek. “Okay, let’s go.”

Boris drops his arm. They move on.

Through the next door, a girl glances back towards them, blue and yellow scarf, rich black background setting off the shimmer of a pearl, the milky paleness of her skin, the gleam of her surprise at finding Boris staring. Like every painting she’s covered in bodies, hands holding phones raised, attempting to capture her.

People collect around the other works, too--a view of a city reflected in water, sky hung heavy with clouds; a jovial party drinking with their dogs and birds; a woman in red writing a letter, viewed through a door and then another--_ doorkijke _ and left-leaning sunlight, all the best of the Golden age. 

Boris is trying to follow Potter’s lead, but he’s been standing at the entrance of the room, paralyzed for what seems like a suspiciously long amount of time. Boris has a sudden, paranoid vision of a security guard bearing down behind them--_ Gentlemen, if we could ask you a few questions… _No, no good. They are just here to look at paintings--very famous paintings, some recovered from bad people not long ago!--with the rest of the holiday crowds. He tries to ground himself with a hand on Theo’s shoulder once again. 

They stand for a few moments longer, anxiety building up in Boris’s chest. And all of the sudden--as though they’ve given each other permission--they turn towards it. 

It’s propped in front of the television in Theo’s living room, it’s hanging against sage green wallpaper, it’s really a bird chained to a whitewashed wall four hundred years ago. Boris’s breath catches and he feels as though he has traveled here through time. He and Theo, alone on the stained cream carpet, backs against the rounded edge of dated cherry wood. Both of them here, alone in this room full of people--people who came to see _ their _painting--time narrowing down to not a single point, but all of them, a tape recording over itself.

Boris runs his hand down Theo’s arm to tangle their fingers together. He expects maybe more tears, but instead Potter is dry-eyed, giving off a kind of blank, nervous energy. 

Together they walk towards the painting, through the people with headphones pressed to their ears, with journals and sketchbooks in their hands, capturing in bitter black and white something that glows as though it contains its own source of light. 

Boris wonders what everyone is seeing when they look at the bird, when they take its picture, when they hear the audio tour say in every language _This is one of the few works we know by Fabritius. He painted the goldfinch with clearly visible brushstrokes. He depicted the wing in thick yellow paint, which he scratched with the handle of his brush. _

How can they believe they know something resembling the truth, when they have never had Theo laid out below them?

Potter is patient, and Boris takes his cues from him, waiting for their turn to stand in front of it, to be regarded by it, waiting to take back with their eyes something that is rightfully theirs, body and soul. 

They move towards it in what seems like slow motion—time wavering around them. In flashes, the people disappear and reappear, the open space shrinks down, the lights dim. Boris is staring into a locker, a monstrous tape-wrapped package inside. 

Clear as day he knows. He’s always been selfish. He wanted Theo, and when he felt he couldn’t have him anymore he moved on but never stopped _ wanting _ \--it was an ache that was almost physical, only barely soothed in the arms of others. When he saw what he knew was the painting in Potter’s locker, he thought only of himself, of _ possession. _ Now, no matter where he was, where he ended up, Potter would be his. In Vegas or New York or Ukraine or New Guinea, wherever Boris washed up... _ his. _

In front of him, the painting is wrapped in the chaos of newspaper and masking tape, it’s lying cut open on a stainless steel shop class table, it’s basking in the warmth of the recently-viewed _ Dr. No _, it’s staring at Boris place a kiss on another boy’s temple.

And then_ Boris _Theo whispers, shaking their intertwined hands; Boris’s skin still tingles with the cool breeze of a long ago AC, but he’s not there, he’s here with Potter--the painting in front of them, the years, the hurt, the forgotten and unsaid in between.

What was it supposed to feel like, standing in front of a painting you stole and stole again? Holding the hand of the man who stole it first? Boris does not know. He just knows that the space around his heart, where all the horrible things build up, thick, and wet, and poisonous--the space he flooded with heroin and vodka and a careless arm slung around a shoulder--is suddenly, blessedly empty. As though someone has reached in, a hand down a drain, and scraped it all away. He feels _ pure _, the bird’s light shining out of him. 

Boris wants to turn to Potter, grasp his face in his hands, smash their lips together, shotgun the unbearable lightness into Theo’s mouth, into his lungs--give him this giddy feeling that he deserves so much more than Boris. But instead it’s Potter who turns towards him, smile breaking slow across his face in the way that Boris loves so much. 

Potter doesn’t kiss him this time, but places his arms around Boris’s shoulders, breaking through years of separation, through rough public touches and nights soaked in tenderness, through a barrier that’s long existed but they’ve only just begun to name. And Boris, with Theo’s fingers tracing slowly and lightly along his back, feels _ calm, calm, calm _in a way he hasn’t since baking on the rough cement tile of the Desert End pool.

The weight of Theo’s arms around him, the brightness of the painting reflecting off his face...surrounded on all sides by sunlight, Boris is finally warm.

**Author's Note:**

> The first Boris/Theo fic I ever read was A Grand Inquisition by M_Leigh and, while I didn’t realize it til halfway through writing, I’m sure the scene where they go to the Mauritshuis is inspired by that incredible work! 
> 
> I have only been to the Mauritshuis during its renovation, so forgive me if I have fudged some of the rooms in which certain paintings reside now.
> 
> Title is from Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills & Nash from their great album Crosby, Stills & Nash. Incredible those guys had read The Goldfinch in 1969 and wrote this song and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes for Boris. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading! You can find me occasionally on tumblr at punkrockreyskywalker.


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